These 12 Stunning Photos Will Change Everything You Think You Know About Masculinity

Photographer Jess Dugan's photo series "Every Breath We Drew" is focusing on what she calls "gentle masculinity," which she described to The Huffington Post as "a version of masculinity that is more expansive, and more vulnerable, than the kind often represented in mainstream culture."

Dugan told Cosmopolitan.com the project began when she began thinking about what masculinity really meant on a personal and cultural level, and exploring those themes in her photographs.

"My interest in a more gentle version of masculinity comes directly from my own identity and my experience of defining the ways in which I felt masculine, and what that meant, or could mean, for me. As a young queer person, I first discovered images of people who looked like me in photography books. Seeing my identity reflected back to me through these images was incredibly influential and instilled in me a deep belief in the importance of representation."

Dugan's project chronicles people who are male-identified, transgender and cisgender, genderqueer, and even some female-identified people, all of whom possess "a thread of gentle masculinity." She says her goal is to "expand our ideas about gender and sexuality by not reducing people to finite, easily defined categories."

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